Why can I not override dubious ownership for a GitHub workflow?

I am trying to set up a GitHub workflow for build the docs and keep on getting this issue.

Run ad-m/github-push-action@v0.5.0
/usr/bin/docker run ...
Push to branch gh-pages
fatal: detected dubious ownership in repository at '/github/workspace/docs/build/html'
To add an exception for this directory, call:

    git config --global --add safe.directory /github/workspace/docs/build/html

I have modified my workflow accordingly:

name: docs_pages_workflow 

on: 
  push:
    branches: [ main ]   

jobs:
 build_docs_job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      GITHUB_PAT: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2.3.4

      - name: Set up Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v2.2.1
        with:
          python-version: 3.9

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: |
          python -m pip install -U sphinx
          python -m pip install sphinx-rtd-theme
      - name: make the sphinx docs
        run: |
          mkdir -p docs
          make -C docs clean
          make -C docs html
      - name: Mark repo as safe
        run: git config --global --add safe.directory /github/workspace/docs/build/html

      - name: Init new repo in dist folder and commit
        run: |
          mkdir -p docs/build/html/
          cd docs/build/html/
          git init
          touch .nojekyll
          git add -A
          git config --local user.email "action@github.com"
          git config --local user.name "GitHub Action"
          git commit -m 'deploy'
  
      - name: Force push to destination branch
        uses: ad-m/github-push-action@v0.5.0
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          branch: gh-pages
          force: true
          directory: ./docs/build/html

I have also tried:

git config --global --add safe.directory $GITHUB_WORKSPACE
git config --global --add safe.directory docs/build/html

As well as calling it various ways in the script.

Any advice?

The problem was that the workflow declared the safe directory outside of the docker containter.

This can apparently be fixed by instead using, though I have not tested it:

- name: Allow git in Docker action
  run: |
    GIT_GLOBAL="/home/runner/work/_temp/_github_home/.gitconfig"
    git config --file "$GIT_GLOBAL" --add safe.directory "$GITHUB_WORKSPACE"
    git config --file "$GIT_GLOBAL" --add safe.directory "$GITHUB_WORKSPACE/docs/build/html"

I opted to avoid the workaround and use an alternative deployment, official gh-pages deployment I found about instead of deploying to a branch, this resulted in changing the script to this:

name: docs_pages_workflow 

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
  workflow_dispatch:

permissions:
  contents: read
  pages: write
  id-token: write

concurrency:
  group: "pages"
  cancel-in-progress: false

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: '3.9'

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: |
          python -m pip install -U pip
          python -m pip install sphinx sphinx-rtd-theme

      - name: Build Sphinx
        run: |
          mkdir -p docs
          make -C docs clean
          make -C docs html

      - name: Upload artifact
        uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
        with:
          path: docs/build/html

  deploy:
    needs: build
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment:
      name: github-pages
      url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
    steps:
      - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
        id: deployment
        uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4

Courtesy of UnoxyRich over on github: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/169665